


👑 FIRST PLACE < •Enter USER Here•

by ObtuseOctopus



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Video Game World, Enemies to Friends, F/F, Gamer AU - Freeform, Human Gems (Steven Universe), Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObtuseOctopus/pseuds/ObtuseOctopus
Summary: • COMPLETE. •Furious that her place on the leaderboard has been claimed by an infamous new gamer known as the Water Witch, Peridot will do what she can to reclaim her crown in the video game world.
Relationships: Lapis Lazuli/Peridot (Steven Universe)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	👑 FIRST PLACE < •Enter USER Here•

**Author's Note:**

> // Gamer AU where it’s like Ready Player One, but the game is basically an international super large single server realistic version of Minecraft. Players can exit and save with their items in inventory whenever, but that also leaves their builds and chests vulnerable to others online. Players can also create their own private servers for a small fee.  
> This is what happens when I get a jolt to write while listening to JT Music’s “Herobrine VS Griefer Rap”. Go check him out, like, seriously, he has cool songs for all kinds of games.

“Is she around?”

“Eh… I don’t see her, dude. What’s your deal with her anyway?”

“Amethyst! She’s the  _ Water Witch _ ! She’s the only person in the entire server worldwide that beat my score! My position on the leaderboard is in jeopardy!” Peridot explained, setting the first block closest to her on fire. “If I destroy her base though, I have a chance of getting back to first place on the server scoreboard!”

“And that’s important… why?” Amethyst popped the bubble of gum she had created. 

“Eugh! You don’t get it!” Peridot huffed. “Here, start lighting the other part on fire.” She handed over a pair of flint and steel.

“How do you know that this is her base?” Amethyst asked, reluctantly helping her friend set the house ablaze.

Peridot paused. “Um…”

“Exactly,” Amethyst laughed. She abruptly halted. “... Oh. Hey, uh- Per, this is a bad time to say this but-“

“... She’s right behind me, isn’t’ she?” Peridot gulped.

Amethyst slowly nodded.

“And this was a trap, wasn’t it?”

Amethyst again nodded.

The two stared at each other as the fake house set ablaze.

“... Shit,” Peridot said before her avatar was killed off.

It had been about a week of constant back and forth between two high ranking gamers. The Water Witch had made a shocking and very sudden climb to the stars, beating 20MasterRobonoid20 by a landslide. It was  _ impossible _ ! Nobody had beaten Peridot before on the scoreboard, and nobody had gotten even remotely close to Peridot’s progress! So when this Water Witch user had made an account two weeks ago, nobody cared. But now everybody did, and boy was Peridot pissed about it. Her fame and fans were going for this other player instead! 

“I’m only saying, man. Maybe you should let it go,” Amethyst told Peridot as they reworked on their house, which had been unfortunately destroyed by the Water Witch recently. Right after their failure to find her base, of course. “It’s just a scoreboard.”

“I spent so much time and money into this game!” Peridot rebutted. “My progress can’t just disappear like that!! My fans!! My millions of fans!!” She collapsed, crying to the sky.

“Ooookay. I’ll go finish this wall,” Amethyst said.

It was a game of cat and mouse. Peridot would go and try to find this Water Witch to destroy her base or kill her to steal some of her points, and it usually ended in failure. Rumors said that the Water Witch was a young adult or a teen somewhere between seventeen or nineteen. The only fact anybody knew about her was that she was a she, or so people assumed as she had a female avatar and someone claimed to have heard her speak before. 

“I don’t understand… how does she always know where I am!?” Peridot paced around their base while Amethyst stayed for emotional support. “It’s like she’s stalking me! Is she stalking me?!”

“Beats me,” Amethyst giggled, eating an apple. “I wish these things were real. Imagine how much bread or cake I could eat from making some in this game.”

“Now is not the time for food! Now is the time for justice!” Peridot crafted a diamond sword at her table, showing it off once she finished making it. “I have a map where I marked all the places she isn't. So all we have to do? We just explore all the places that haven’t been checked yet, and eventually we find her!!”

“What if she made her base in the sky?” Amethyst proposed. “Or… in the ground? That doesn’t show up on the map well.”

Peridot put her sword down. “You’re right… Hmm…” She thought for a bit. “Oh! What if we get other players to join us?”

“Who would?”

“Shoot. Um…” 

“I say you call it quits and let’s get back to playing before you got obsessed with this first place thing,” Amethyst yawned.

Peridot frowned. “We have to work to find her before she strikes us again!! It’s not like she will show up at our door!!”

“Who’s that outside?”

“... If it’s her, I’m going to make my avatar jump off a cliff.”

“Okay, I’m not saying anything then,” Amethyst shrugged.

“Oh no-“ Peridot stiffened. She turned towards the door, spying the shape of an avatar outside their base. “OH NONONONOOOOO. AMETHYST! WHAT DO WE DO?!”

“Respawn?” Amethyst thought. “Or we have swords…”

“SWORDS! YES! We will strike when she least expects it!!” Peridot cackled. “Come on, we don’t have much time!”

“Why’s she here anyway? She’s not even breaking in!” Amethyst commented. “What a polite gamer.”

“Huh, that is weird now that you mention it,,.” Peridot scratched her chin. “Follow my lead when I go to answer the door. If she tricks us again, we could lose all our items!”

“Got it,” Amethyst drew her sword.

Peridot inhaled. When she exhaled, she slowly approached the door. Steady now, steady… she flung it open with a shriek, sword at the ready.

The Water Witch stared at Peridot, seeming dumbfounded. “... Hey. You okay?”

Peridot’s eyes went wide. “UM- you’re talking to me-“

“Yeah? I am.”

“YOU ARE  _ TALKING _ TO ME.”

The Water Witch backed up. “Take off your VR if you’re having a seizure or… whatever is going on with you.”

“Are you actually a girl? Or are you using one of those voice changer boxes? Do you actually have blue hair like your avatar?”

“Look, I just came here to say-“

“HOW DID YOU FIND OUR BASE?”

“Can I talk?”

Peridot shut her mouth.

“I just came here to say no hard feelings, right?” The Water Witch dropped a pack of diamonds.

“... How did- how did you-“

“And, you might want to save and exit now,” she smiled. “Catch you later.” Just like that, she spread her light blue elytra, taking off into the sky.

“Wait- HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?! ARE YOU HACKING?!” Peridot yelled after her. She studied the diamonds that she had been given, her eyes discovering something horrible. She was standing on a pressure plate. The area blew up before she could reconsider.

So it was war then. The Water Witch had blown up the base, leaving Amethyst and Peridot to once again repair and rebuild from the rubble.

“I’m sick of her!” Amethyst whined. “This is the sixth time this week we had to redo this crap!”

“Now you understand my frustrations?!” Peridot said. “We have to take her down- one way or another, she’ll be brought down!”

“Why does she do this anyway? What does she gain from this?” Amethyst mumbled. She placed another wooden block, then sat down on it. 

“Fans,” Peridot grimaced. “MY fans! That was MY place on the leaderboard!!”

“How about we invite her to a private server?”

“You think I have the money for that?”

“Oh. You’re right.”

“We just have to keep trying to locate her base. We can hire recruits… hmm…”

The closest they got to finding this Witch’s base was after seventy four hours of searching and bumping into many other players. One mentioned that she was in the ocean, and had made an underwater base.

“Of course!” Peridot grinned. “Water Witch! Underwater! That’s why her base is hard to find!”

“I’m getting bags under my eyes in RL,” Amethyst sighed. “Holy crap, Peri… I’m gonna pass out.”

“You can’t pass out yet! We are so close! Tell me, FireGirl6570, what direction is she? Do you know?!”

The red avatar shrugged. “I dunno,” she admitted.

Peridot screamed in irritation.

Luckily, the next day of online play brought good news. Another player had responded to the forum that Peridot posted, and they mentioned that the reason the Water Witch has such a high score is because she has never died once, and she destroys and steals other’s things.

“How is that allowed?!” Peridot whined.

“Dude, this is a large server for everyone worldwide with hardly any moderation,” Amethyst reminded her. “Whoever made this game wasn’t that bright now I think of it.”

“She’s a griefer!” Peridot concluded. “That’s against the rules!!! She should have her account banned or suspended by the bots!!”

“Maybe she’s just super incognito about it?” Amethyst suggested.

Later that same day, they escaped a narrow encounter with the Water Witch. And it became clear that this player had gotten famous because indeed, she was a griefer. People despised her, rather than liked her. But as fame goes, it’s usually the heroes that get remembered sure, but legends never die. 

“She attacked this village…” Peridot noted as she walked through the remains do what used to be a collaboration between builders.

“Someone needs to stop her, this is getting fucking ridiculous,” one of the victims announced.

“I say we use cobblestone and obsidian, move to more secret bases so she can’t find us easily,” another player added.

People began to get nervous;

“Where’s a moderator?!” 

“Where’s the moderation bots?!”

“Okay, private server, everyone! If you want to join, hit me up at my forums…”

“I say we have a bounty.”

“Bounty?! She’ll just respawn!!”

“Shit…”

Peridot stood back, listening to them all.

“What if she IS one of the moderators, and that’s why she doesn’t get banned?”

“That’s dumb, that’s admin abuse.”

“I never got griefed by her!” A smaller avatar in the back spoke up.

Everybody turned to him.

“Hi! I’m Steven,” <3CookieCatLion<3 introduced himself. 

“You… never got griefed by her?” 

“Nope!” Steven shook his head. “The other day, she gave me and Peedee some stuff! She’s super nice. I don’t know what everybody is talking about.”

“Do you know her in person?” Someone questioned him. Peridot listened with interest.

“No, but she-“

“Hey! That’s MY horse!” Someone noticed the animal that Steven had on a lead with him. “Diamond armor, and the nametag Joester!”

“Huh? Oh! This is one of the stuff she gave me,” Steven smiled. “Wait, is he yours?”

“So she steals and griefs us… to give our stuff to little kids?” Amethyst whispered to Peridot.

“She’s a Robin Hood of sorts,” Peridot nodded in agreement. “Why would anybody…-?”

People began to finally assemble searches and ask their younger siblings who played about the Water Witch. Buildings got destroyed, loot got taken, and livestock and crops got stolen.

“We’re literally following a kid to see if he knows where the Water Witch is?” Amethyst muttered to her friend. Both players quietly followed Steven’s avatar across the map, shielded by the darkness of the night cycle in the game that also reflected time in real life. “Peridot, it’s like almost ten- I am going to die of insomnia.”

“Shh!! Shh, shh!” Peridot gestured for Amethyst to move up with her. The two stayed crouched behind a hill, peeking out as little as they could. There she was- the Water Witch. She was giving some items to Steven, and Peridot couldn’t quite make out what they were saying to each other. “On my count, we charge. She doesn’t have her elytra on. Ready? One, two-“

“Two three go!” Amethyst ran out with her sword.

“AME- oh, forget it. CHARGE!!” Peridot raced after her friend with her weapon, taking the Water Witch by surprise.

“Hey! Wait! Stop!” Steven began, turning around as soon as he heard the ruckus.

“I know you guys,” the Water Witch sounded pleased. “Hey. How’s it going?”

“GET HER!! GET HER!!” Peridot swiped her sword at her.

The Water Witch stood there, crossing her arms.

“Isn’t it weird how she’s not responding?” Amethyst shouted before contact was made.

The Water Witch teleported.

Peridot’s sword sliced empty air. “Wait- WHAT- SHE IS SO HACKING!! HACKS!! HACKS!!”

“It’s super hard to even hack this game. Look, she had one of those ender things,” Amethyst pointed out. The Water Witch appeared behind the duo, and Peridot was growing livid.

“UGH! Give me back my place on the leaderboard!!!”

“Leaderboard?” The Water Witch held in a laugh. “You mean… the unofficial one posted by the famous blogging guy?”

Peridot blushed, embarrassed.

“There’s no official leaderboard or scoreboard or whatever. How do you even know this leaderboard is legit?” The Water Witch challenged.

“Because it counts our XP points-!”

“No, people make up their scores all the time. Nobody actually checks.”

Peridot was flabbergasted.

“So… besides that- how can I help you?”

“How about you stop griefing our shit all the time?!” Amethyst roared.

“Grief?” She laughed. “I call it repurposing. Besides, it’s funny to piss people off after they bully little kids on this dumb game.”

“This game isn’t dumb, and I never bullied a little kid! They’re NOOBS! Why would I waste my time on them?!” Peridot hissed.

“March fifteen, 20MasterRobonoid20 destroyed the house of FriesBeforeGuys. April eight, 20MasterRobonoid20 set fire to the base of UnicornGirlPuppy. June twelve, 20MasterRobonoid20-“

“Okay! Okay! So  _ maybe  _ I destroyed a few things here and there because little kids annoyed me!” Peridot admitted.

“They’re just kids,” the Water Witch sighed. “They’re just trying to have fun.”

“So that gives you the right to destroy our things?!”

“I give them stuff to help them out. I destroy  _ your  _ things because you destroy  _ theirs _ .” The Water Witch pulled out a crossbow. “I have no idea who put me on the leaderboard, but I definitely don’t have much XP. I joined this month after Steven’s house was blown up by some douche.”

“Stev- you KNOW HER?!” Peridot faced the shorter avatar. 

Steven sheepishly smiled. “I have to lie and say I don’t know her otherwise people would bother me all the time about her.”

“Cut the crap! Let’s kill her already!” Amethyst groaned.

“I’ll just respawn,” the Water Witch shrugged.

“... Fuck, fair point,” Amethyst mumbled. “But you’ll respawn without your-“

“I don’t have any base, chests, or open loot.” The Water Witch started walking away. “And players keep all their inventory when they die. Remember?” She cast a snarky look.

“... God, she’s good,” Amethyst kneeled in defeat.

“I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do!” Peridot swore. “I’ll- I’ll get my place back on that leaderboard, and I’ll-!”

“I’ll see you around,  _ Robonoid,”  _ the Water Witch saluted with two fingers. “It’s been fun. But... I’m going to sleep.”

**> The Water Witch has left the game.**

Peridot blankly stared.

“... So. Guess nobody will ever stop or catch her, huh?” Amethyst said. “Man, this game has so many flaws now I think of it.”

Peridot blinked.

**> 20MasterRobonoid20 has left the game.**

Peridot removed her VR headset, and she grabbed the nearest pillow, screaming her head off into it.


End file.
